The variety and availability of audio, video, and multimedia content has increased significantly in the recent past. Internet, mobile Internet, cell phones, personal data assistants, and other mobile media devices fuel constant development and increased demand for media content delivery in a variety of formats. Furthermore, the rapid growth in user-generated content has created a large supply of media content available to users in a large number of disparate formats.
Converting content from a source format provided by a content source to a different target format supported by a particular media player can be time-consuming and computationally-intense. Moreover, the wide variety of source and target formats available can result in slow content-delivery, create congestion in content-processing components, and require ever increasing storage capabilities. Additionally, delays in content processing may degrade the user experience.